South African startup Snapt has raised US$3 million in Series A funding to expand sales and marketing efforts globally, including expansion of its US presence and worldwide channel programme, in addition to key research and development initiatives.
Snapt, which was founded in South Africa in 2012 and is a provider of software-based load balancers and application delivery controllers (ADCs), established an independent sales and marketing arm in the United States (US) in 2015 to cope with increasing demand and last secured investment in 2016 when it raised US$1 million.
As it continues to innovate in the ADC market, the company is working to address the changing nature of network architecture in response to growing data and security concerns, while developing new protocols that define how applications are delivered.
The new US$3 million round sees existing investor Convergence Partners joined by two additional investors – Nedbank, through its Corporate and Investment Banking (CIB) division, and Sanari Capital, which specialises in high-growth emerging market opportunities.
“Our continued investment in Snapt is due to our belief in their vision that there is a software revolution happening, and that their software-based ADC helps developers take advantage of this and optimize their applications and infrastructure at the root,” said Andile Ngcaba, chairman of Convergence Partners. “We look forward to working with them during their expansion into new markets and opportunities.”
Johann van Zyl of Nedbank CIB’s venture capital business said Snapt offered a new approach to the ADC market, and has made great progress building a solid product.
“We are impressed by their strong customer traction in enterprise, and are aligned with their vision of a software-based ADC for DevOps. We see tremendous room for innovation as organisations move to the cloud and deploy containers and other new infrastructure. We look forward to partnering with the very dedicated Snapt team during this next phase of growth,” he said.
Currently used by companies ranging from startups to Fortune 500 companies, Snapt has developed an ADC that is easy to use and deploy, and is built around modern models and use cases with key value offerings including flexibility of environments and user empowerment.
“The ADC market is evolving quickly, and Snapt is the perfect product to meet companies’ needs for more advanced ADC solutions that are designed for DevOps, including cloud, cloud-native and virtualized deployments,” said Dave Blakey, Snapt’s co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO). “We are very pleased to have developed a strong network of partners that can help drive our expansion and support our rapidly growing customer base as we execute the next stage of our IP strategy, ensuring that we continue to bring the most advanced ADC solutions to market.”
